Il Pleut

I am on holiday and at such times, even though I am only in Somerset, I feel the urge to break into French. A minor problem is that my french got as far as GCSE and then went down hill in the intervening 16 years. So it's a bit franglais only without the talent true franglais requires.

Imaginer mon surprise quand je saw le pub sign ici.

How I ended up in Malmesbury is again one of those things that can only be understood when you consider my quite obscene lack of any sense of direction. And this is even with a satnav. Ah yes, dear Liam, who has done so much for Nickerjac and I on our trips to SkipNorth, again saved the day in getting me from A to B and I wouldn't have ended up in Malmesbury had I not got it into my head to pop to Cirencester using road signs alone and then got lost. 

Liam did rejoin me to do the right thing in getting me to Lacock where my sister lives and where such tour de forces as Pride and Pejudice, Cranford and Harry Potter have been filmed. Not having seen any of these (although I have admired the mitts) this means nothing to me but she says anyone who has watched those should recognise this. 

It is an amazingly picturesque place without being quaint and 'ye olde' about it. I would recommend a visit if you're in the area.

What will I be doing with my week in the deep south? The plan so far is...

• Boot Fair today (not going to happen because it is pouring  - really pouring - with rain)
• Longleat when it is raining less
• Visit Bath as I never have and there is a quilt museum amongst other things. 
• Knit knit knit
• Read read read

I have rented a car so I will also be doing lots of tootling around looking at the surrounding countryside, collecting clouds. I believe I have mentioned this book before:

And the accompanying one:

And I saw many fine examples while driving yesterday. But being a safe driver I didn't try to photograph them while driving. You need traffic jams for that, a la Crazy Aunt Purl. So if the rain stops and some non-blanket clouds appear expect regular cloud updates on twitter and on here.